Jacob G. Hornberger observes the problems that our current policies have.
I think the essential problem with the current crop of neoconservatives justifying anything our government does is that they are employing terms that are, strictly speakng, not applicable.
Supposedly, we are at war, and all of the people at Guantanamo are unlawful enemy combatants, so we can essentially hold them as long as we want without pressing charges. Even if they are POWs, we are allowed to hold them until the end of hostilities, so we have the right to hold them indefinitely, as this war has no clear end.
The problem with this type of talk is, of course, that it ignores the possibility that if this war has no clear ending, perhaps it should not be though of as a war, per se. Listen, if these people are suspected of being unlawful enemy combatants, they should have a trial to determine this, and then if convicted, we can imprison them, execute them, or whatever we need to do with them. Yes, I agree that we don't need to worry about protecting the rights of unlawful combatants, but we do need to worry about protecting the rights of people wrongly accused of being unlawful enemy combatants. Without trials, we do not have a good way of distinguishing the two.
And what if they are legal prisoners of war? Well, the first thing to do is to determine what war. A general war against terror? Please. The war in Afghanistan? The war in Iraq? And then we need to determine how we know whether or not we have won, so we can dfine an "end to hostilities" when the POWs will be let out.
We have already overthrown the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, and are not at war with any other Middle Eastern country, so if we define victory as in World War II, we have already won and POWs need to have releases scheduled. People who are unlawful combatants need to be tried or released.
We need to use the system as it was intended, not play word games to allow us to do whatever we want and whatever is convenient.
That is all.
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